Buyers and sellers use a variety of techniques to ensure goods and services meet their mutual expectations. However, traditional procurement systems have been proven to be error prone, labor intensive, and costly operations. For example, often times, when a buyer is looking to purchase a batch of articles, a buyer might negotiate terms for the purchase prior to making the purchasing decision. The negotiation allows the buyer and seller to ensure the articles and terms (e.g., price, quantity, delivery conditions, etc.) will meet any specific requirements. As is generally known, it is advantageous to consider many alternative buyers/sellers when negotiating terms. A larger number of buyers and sellers available, for example, to bid on articles of manufacture, usually leads to a more efficient matching of requirements between buyers and sellers (e.g., getting the best deal). Traditional buying and selling mediums, such as auctions, catalog based purchasing and selling, and the like, do not always facilitate the most efficient matching of requirements. Alternatively, when prior inspection of an article is not possible or practical, the seller may provide the buyer with specifications describing the properties of the articles. The recent ascendancy of electronic commerce provides a means of avoiding, or at least reducing, the problems presented by the use of traditional buying and selling mediums.
In many respects, the Internet and the World Wide Web based network technologies have largely eliminated the most labor intensive and costly portions of the buying and selling type commerce operations (e.g., the use of mass mailings, printed specifications, catalogs, updating preprinted product information, etc.). However, many of the old problems still remain. For example, the fact that a buyer may find a seller from whom to purchase a batch of articles “on-line”, does not change the fact that the buyer might not be aware of a more favorable purchase opportunity from a different seller prior to making the purchasing decision. Even when negotiation and/or inspection of all articles from all possible sellers is not practical, the buyer would find very helpful a comprehensive system for gathering offers from a large, widely distributed number of sellers.
To avoid these problems, a variety of electronic commerce facilitating schemes were developed. One such scheme involved the use of business-to-business buying and selling exchanges implemented on the Internet. The term “electronic commerce” or “e-commerce” originally evolved from remote forms of electronic shopping to mean all aspects of business and market processes enabled by wide area communications networks, namely, the Internet and the World Wide Web based network technologies. E-commerce is a rapidly growing field, and is generally understood to mean doing business on-line or selling and buying products and services through Web (e.g., Internet based) storefronts or through other similar distributed computer networks. In general, electronic commerce is substantially similar to the more traditional catalog based commerce schemes. The business-to-business e-commerce exchanges, or simply “B2B exchanges” have evolved to focus on the specific needs and requirements of buying and selling between businesses.
As the use of B2B exchanges has proliferated, the implementation of electronic commerce auctions has become increasingly common. The use of electronic commerce facilitated auctions, or simply electronic auctions, has become a preferred method of efficiently matching buyers and sellers of goods and services. Electronic auctions provide a convenient means for aggregating large numbers of buyers or sellers and efficiently disseminating market information among them.
Auctions are different from traditional catalog based commerce schemes. Auctions generally aggregate buyers or sellers to purchase or sell items/services through the respective submission of competitive bids. Generally, the most competitive bid is designated the winner of the auction. For example, in an auction amongst multiple competing buyers, the most competitive bid is usually the bid offering the most money for the specified item or service. In an auction amongst multiple competing sellers, the most competitive bid is usually the bid offering the specified item or service for the lowest price.
Thus, buyers and sellers participating in an auction compete with one another on the basis of the terms of their bids. Auctioneers have an interest in making the bidding process as competitive as possible to effect the most efficient matching of requirements between sellers and buyers (e.g., getting the best deal). Large numbers of buyers or sellers competitively trying to outbid one another usually leads to the most favorable terms.
Buyers and sellers have an interest in ascertaining the competitiveness of their respective bids. In a highly competitive auction, the status of the bids for the specified item, as they are made, is important information regarding respective chances of a particular buyer or seller being designated the winner of the auction.
There is a problem, however, in that the use of electronic commerce facilitated auctions creates problems for the buyers and sellers with respect to tracking the status of the bidding process. Electronic commerce is generally enabled by wide area communications networks, namely, the Internet and the World Wide Web based network technologies. As such, for example, auction participants are typically coupled to the auction event (e.g., exchange, etc.) via a web browser client communicating with auction event servers over the Internet. As is common with Internet and World Wide Web based technologies, auction participants currently have to “hit reload” (e.g., within their web browser GUI) to determine the status of the auctions. For example, as new bids are entered, the only way an auction participant can determine the status her respective bid is to hit “refresh” in the browser GUI to query the exchange server for the status of all the bids. This is the only way a winning bidder can ensure he/she is still in possession of the winning bid. There is a certain amount of lag in the bid update process attributable to the Internet and World Wide Web network technologies.
Hence, the status of the bidding process is not efficiently disseminated to the auction participants. This leads to a large degree of uncertainty at the end of the auction as to which of the auction participants has won the auction. For example, several participants might believe they are in possession of the winning bid only to find that at some instant prior to the close of the auction they were outbid by a competitor. Additionally, more complex auctions can involve competition on many terms other than price. For example, attributes such as delivery conditions, special item features, volume discounts, and the like can factor into the determination of the most competitive bid. The effectiveness of the auction process is greatly hampered when such bid attributes are not efficiently disseminated to the participants.
Thus, what is required is a solution for efficiently providing bid status updates to all auction participants. The required solution should be user configurable to provide status updates in accordance with the circumstances of the auction and the particular requirements of the user. The required solution should provide status updates on special bid attributes such as delivery conditions, special item features, and the like. Additionally, the required solution should be compatible with widely used electronic commerce enabling technology. The present invention provides a novel solution to the above requirements.